


and if not, that's okay.

by heartshapedcookie



Category: Spacebar, Spacebar: A Broadway Play by Kyle Sugarman
Genre: Child Abuse, F/F, M/M, Mentions of Death, Very Minor Character Death, but most of the stories are soft and gentle..., come from a variety of times/some different au's, mentions of abuse, some post-surgery delirium/fuzziness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25188715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcookie/pseuds/heartshapedcookie
Summary: A collection of "Spacebar" drabbles and one-shots, primarily focusing on Kyle and his relationships with his friends, family, and eventual boyfriend.
Relationships: Jessica Baker/Brianna Newton, Kyle Sugarman/Drew Sanchez





	1. cuddles.

**Author's Note:**

> this first one is just a very gentle moment of friendship between kyle and jessica....in case u weren't aware, they're Best Fucking Friends
> 
> warnings for being on pain medication, being a little fuzzy/delirious, very vague references to surgery 
> 
> summary: jessica cuddles with kyle while he recovers from a mild surgery.

“This game makes me happy.”

She had been distracted again by the bones breeching against his skin, by the plateaus and canyons that channeled shadow through those famished hollows and the sharp, glacial pinch of his cheekbone grinding against her toned middle. In her weaker moments, she worried quietly about his bones, which seemed so light and drawn that even the sinews twined between them could snap them if jerked too abruptly. He was powerful in his own right, strapped with emotional and intellectual brawn, but the thought of his peachy core having only those ice-brittle bones for protection made her heart clench. Remembering herself, she tousled his dishevelled curls. “You just say that because you love Minecraft sheep.”

“I love Minecraft sheep…” Kyle repeated as if just remembering this to be true. He had started their visit in a mannered sitting position, resisting the inherent vulnerability of proneness, but pain and an afternoon dose of his medication had brought that posturing to an end. Presently, he was curled up on his side with his head tucked against her stomach and a heating pad clutched to his chest. Jessica knew she should probably take the pad away from him per Rebecca’s incredibly long and incredibly detailed instructions about Post-Surgery Kyle Maintenance—”no heating pad for >25 minutes, burn hazard”—but she couldn’t bring herself to do it just yet. The thought of his delicate sternum—that ceramic treasure in a chest, painfully breakable—being split open to scoop out a lump was distressing enough without denying him that small comfort for a few more minutes.

“Do you wanna watch something else? I think this stream’s been running for, like, forty minutes,” Jessica said, reaching forward to toggle her laptop’s mouse pad. She had chosen the first Minecraft play-through stream that YouTube recommended to her, which turned out to be an unbearably tedious stroll through pixelated landscapes. Kyle had been watching it obediently for nearly an hour now, but he would have gladly watched paint dry in his current medicated state. It was slightly unnerving seeing Kyle, who usually couldn’t stay focused on the screen during a thirty-second ad break, so content to stare at nothing, even if it was from his favorite game. 

“Anything’s fine… I just like the sounds.” 

Jessica snickered. “You’ve been half-asleep this whole time, haven’t you?”

“Nooo…” He nuzzled his head against her extended arm, surprising her with his affection. Cuddling was nothing new for her given how many sleepovers with the swim team ended in sleeping bag snuggling and she’d never hesitated to be touchy with Kyle, but he was always so tense when it came to intimacy. She could practically feel his skin receding when she touched him, his body seizing with primal fear and his brain rejecting the possibility that he was deserving of a  _ touch.  _ Today, however, he lacked the faculties to be embarrassed or ashamed of wanting human contact; he soaked up her love like flowers did sun, nourished by it. “Jessica?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“My dad… He wouldn’t’ve let my mom get me a Care Bear,” he mumbled. Rebecca had given him a Take Care Bear plush when they returned home from the hospital, which was currently resting against his pillow. 

“That’s because he’s a fucking asshole.” She didn’t like to mince words when it came to him. Despite never having met him, Jessica had learned a great deal about the Sugarman patriarch from Kyle’s bouts of Explainstorms—her personal term for those anxious moments where he would ramble about a bad memory or a habit that he felt pressured to validate through long-winded explanations. A vast majority of these Explainstorms involved his father in some capacity, primarily as the instigator of said memory or the reason said habit had to be adopted. It definitely made her wish she had paid more attention to his drama class presentation.

Kyle glanced up at her with those space-dark eyes, lightly cataracted by painkillers. “He’s wrong. It’s good to be…”

“Good to be what?” Jessica prompted gently. It was important for him to finish his thoughts, doubly so when he couldn’t find the exact words to snap his feelings into focus. 

His mouth closed to form a serene smile, the glow of which sunned the dark corners and dips of his face. “It’s good I’m me, I think. It’s not a bad thing.”

A bloom of love flowered violently in her chest. She rarely entertained the concept of soulmates or even best friends, having believed for years that she was too common to be found and nurtured by the sort of uniquely special person who would choose her again and again and again, but she found herself blossoming under the care of his warmth. The adoration he had for her—once a novelty—was both precious and infinite, something ground into the atoms of everything that had and ever would exist. Its sustaining light was so powerful that it doubled-back, reflecting the beauty he saw in everyone onto his own heart. Kyle loved her enough to love himself. 

There would be a time and place to ruminate on this, but for now, Jessica merely laughed and adjusted the heating pad still pressed to his chest. “Of course it’s a good thing, you clown. It's always been a good thing. Now do you have it in you to watch another Minecraft video? With sheep?”

“Yeah.” He closed his eyes, feeling blissfully at home. “I love them.”

  
  



	2. the thunder that's breaking in your heart.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> during his senior year of college, kyle's cousin moira dies and he's not ready for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for mentions of death (of both an adult and child), nothing graphic but alluded to more than once.the thunder that’s breaking in your heart

the thunder that’s breaking in your heart

Facebook broke the news to him.

His social media accounts were entirely functional, void of posts and largely unfollowed. If he could have a say in the matter, Kyle wouldn’t even have a Facebook account in the first place: he had watched  _ The Social Network  _ six times in three years and was unshakable in his conviction that it was an evil corporation on par with Uber. Unfortunately, Oberlin’s networking scene was inextricably linked to the data-harvesting, soul-sucking platform, and Kyle didn’t really think four years was enough time to revolutionize the relationship. His moral fortitude was admirable, but even he wasn’t going to miss an internship opportunity just because Mark Zuckerberg was a vicious fraud. 

Checking his Facebook feed was as much a chore as emptying the dishwasher, except emptying the dishwasher was a more pleasurable task to undertake. Kyle rarely deigned to open the website at all, let alone during class, but his anthropology lecture was numbingly and overwhelming boring enough to warrant a few Internet rabbit holes. He had already responded to his boss’s emails about next week’s program and watched Cassie click around an online store that seemed to exclusively sell accessories shaped like female genitalia, pointedly—and quite blushingly—ignoring her impish glances back at him. Scrolling through Facebook would at least make the last fifteen minutes of class seem less interminable.

Kyle looked up at the professor, willed a silent apology for his disrespect of her knowledge into the universe, and opened the website; Cassie giggled into her palm ahead of him at her latest find. He was considering asking her for the link so he could send it to Jessica when his timeline loaded and—

_ what? _

—he saw a vaguely familiar photo, underscored by the caption “rest in peace” in a fluorescently fuchsia font.

His breath balled itself up into a hard, useless knot at the back of his throat. Even though he hadn’t seen the girl in the picture since middle school, he recognized the pretty fold of her eye before he even had the thought to see what account had posted the image. That eye shape ran in the family; his mother had the same fold. So did his aunt Sarah. And so did his cousin Moira, who was smiling demurely in the photograph.

Kyle stared at the block of text that his aunt had written, aware of the words but not at all comprehending them. His brain activity had escalated from tropical storm to category five cyclone, stirring thought fragments into the static that had clouded his senses. He was at once distant and bracingly aware of his surroundings. A red spiral of panic stretched through the brew of storm clouds, momentarily puncturing the tumult and gracing him with awareness enough to shut his laptop—the sound like a gunshot in his ears—stow it in his backpack, and leave the lecture hall. Cassie’s eyes followed him out of the room.

Once he was in the comfortingly bland, low-lit corridor, Kyle tried to take inventory of everything. He leaned his forehead against the wall, too disoriented to ensure that nobody could see him and that this wall was passably clean, and opened the drawer in his mind. Doctor Shawl had been a huge proponent of Inventory, of opening the drawer and trying to sort its contents into a metaphysical silverware divider. This method had lent itself more often to tangents about what kinds of thoughts were spoons and what kinds of emotions were forks, but it could be incredibly effective, especially when things were collapsing and exploding and folding in like lawn chairs in hurricanes.

First—he was embarrassed to have left lecture and drawn attention to himself. Second—that was a stupid and selfish thought to entertain given his cousin was dead. Third—

Kyle reached up to grind his fists into his eyes. The hallway smelled overpoweringly of chlorine.

_ Try again.  _

First—Moira was dead. He had been too shocked to read the cause or parse his aunt’s reaction, but the long and short of it was that she had died, maybe even today. Second—he was freaking out. For now, this could be rationalized as an appropriate reaction to learning that a family member, no matter how estranged, had passed away. Third—his mom was at work and probably didn’t know yet. 

Fourth—he needed to go home. Now.

.

.

“Apparently, it was a fall. She was hanging up plants in her apartment and just…”

Kyle reached for Bean’s floppy, velvety ear and gave it a gentle squeeze; the dog, sensing his unease, adjusted his position in Kyle’s lap before tucking his snout more securely in the fold of his knee. “That’s not fair.”

“I know it isn’t,” his mother replied levelly. He was impressed by her placidity, which was a welcome contrast to the tears that had inexplicably and almost uncontrollably emerged when he answered her call. Her soothing words and Bean’s warm, stabilizing presence had organized some of the yarn-tangle thoughts into their appropriate drawer slot, allowing them to have a conducive, if not exhausting conversation. “It’s not fair at all and I’m so sorry you had to find out that way. Sarah left me a voicemail this morning, but you know I usually don’t check it before work. If I had just—”

“It’s not your fault, Mom. It doesn’t… It doesn’t matter.” There were more words, but his mental tablet had been washed of its similes and adjectives in the tearful flood. 

Rebecca paused on the opposite line, soaking in the crushed quality of her son’s voice. “This is hard, sweetie. This is really hard.”

“Those pieces don’t even fit together.”

“But they do, honey.”

“Do you know how weird it is?” Kyle blurted. Bean lifted his head inquisitively. “I know a girl whose mom died  _ last year  _ and she’s like—she has all the pieces together. The puzzle is done. It doesn’t—It doesn’t make sense for there to still be holes for me. It was so long ago and… I-I shouldn’t  _ be  _ like this still.”

“Kyle, it doesn’t matter how long ago it happened. I still think about Dani every single day.”

“But she’s your daughter. She was a part of you.” Heat pulsed ominously behind his eyes and his chest felt like a jar lid that had been screwed on too tightly. “And I didn’t even know Moira that well. It’s not fair to be this upset about her and Dani when—it doesn’t fit together.”

“Honey, it’s okay to feel upset about this. No one’s going to think it’s unfair or selfish for you to be sad about Moira, even if part of it’s because of Dani. And Dani… She was your sister, Kyle. You’re allowed to be sad about her forever. You lost her before you could even really understand what death was or how to deal with it and that’s hard. That’s hard for anybody and you’ve dealt with it in such a strong way, but there’s always going to be things that get buried or feelings that just don’t go away. When I got Sarah’s voicemail, I sat there in the kitchen and cried and cried because I was thinking about Dani. I should have been thinking about Moira and part of me was, but I was crying for Dani.”

Kyle inhaled until his vision fuzzed darkly at the edges. “It was the same way. I wish it wasn’t the same way.”

“I know, honey.”

“I wish they hadn’t been alone.” His voice broke cleanly, allowing tears to flow once more through the crack. It was a long time before he was able to seal the opening again.

.

.

“Do you want me to come to the funeral with you?”

“You don’t like flying,” was Kyle’s automatic response. He had crawled into bed shortly after recounting the day’s events to Drew, who had listened spectacularly and given Kyle every opportunity to explore the riot of feelings spilling out of his mind drawer. There hadn’t been much that Kyle was mentally equipped to pick apart, but he appreciated the gesture. It was nicer just watching Drew fold and put away clothes anyway.

“I think I can handle it,” Drew said lightly, tucking the last of his athletic socks away. His task completed, he climbed up onto the bed, pulled back the comforter, and offered his muscled arm to Kyle. Longing for some stability, Kyle relaxed into Drew’s embrace; a nose buried itself in his tumbled curls. “I don’t want you going alone.”

“We could drive maybe,” Kyle suggested into his pillow. 

“It’s, like, sixteen hours to Dallas from here. Besides, I know you’re already anxious about missing school and work, you don’t need thirty-two hours in a car to freak out about that.” 

“I don’t want you to fly just for me.” It was difficult stringing together a sentence that would convey just how much he did not want Drew taking on the stress of flight in addition to the stress of caring for him in his state of emotional disrepair. All of his words were nickel instead of silver. “I don’t… want you having to be everything.”

Lips pressed a kiss to the nape of his neck, then smiled against his skin. “Nobody can have everything. Where would they put it?”

Kyle laughed inexorably, the feeling swelling in his lungs like a golden string being plucked. It was at once strange and wonderful to use breath for laughter. “You just don’t need to feel obligated, I guess.”

“There’s no obligation. I want to be here for you always, not just when things are going perfect. Besides, I need you there to fly. You’re my emotional support boyfriend.” He leaned in to wrap his arms more securely around Kyle: there weren’t sufficient words in his mind either. “I love you. And I’m going to be here for you, no matter what.”

“I love you, too.”

.

.

_ “I love you. Mary said I’d hate having a little brother, but she doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know you.” _

_. _

_. _

“I love you, too.”

  
  



	3. awakens ancient feelings.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kyle is sick on superbowl sunday and it brings back instincts that drew soothes away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some vague references to child abuse/abuse in this one, mostly just soft and syrupy

As the hour changed and TV Land gently reminded its viewers of the upcoming programming block of  _ Little House on the Prairie  _ reruns, Kyle stirred from his medicated half-sleep. He hadn’t heard Drew leave or the dull splush of water running in the kitchen, but the coffee table had been cleared of its many dishes and discarded blister packs; an embarrassed relief bled through the drowsiness. The mess, however small, had made his skin crawl with something not quite like goose bumps and his stomach roil with something not quite like nausea. With it now gone, the closed-fist knot in his chest unclenched, allowing an easier—if somewhat wheezy—breath.

Drew was currently sprawled across the couch, his head tucked in Kyle’s lap and hands folded neatly over his chest as if in prayer. He snored deeply, the sound so comforting that Kyle lost himself briefly in the metronomic depths of it, riding the sine waves up and down until the room felt a little more real instead of like a NyQuil-flavored imitation of one. It was late, late enough for both of them to be in bed, but he didn’t have the heart to rouse Drew or the equilibrium to stand. Besides, Drew deserved some rest.

He had woken up that morning to a pink-raw soreness in his throat redolent of scrapes and paper cuts, all the stinging frustrations of the world sitting heavily on his tonsils. His plans of tackling his Beckett essay and cleaning the bathroom before the guests started arriving had fallen by the wayside once he’d made it to the sofa, where he had curled up under the fleece blanket that Drew’s mom had given him for Hanukkah-Christmas and stayed until Drew returned home from Mass. Words were already tangling around each other like all the plastic soda-rings of the ocean: his voice all but dried up when it came time to answer Drew’s soft “you doing okay?”, wrung from him by a squeezing rush of guilt. As much as he wanted to deprogram his ugly survival instincts, he still went mute at the prospect of saying anything even approximating “I don’t feel well”. To need was to be needy and nobody liked a leech.

Drew hadn’t believed his hoarse assurances that he was really fine anyway, which should have been a comfort if it hadn’t meant having to cancel their—or, rather, Drew’s—plans for the evening. There were too many words to pack into one sentence, words about yelling and hiding and helping, but he couldn’t string them together with the exact precision he wanted. He had started to spiral, talking himself in dizzy circles about how he could just stay in the bedroom while Drew watched the game with his friends— _ hiding in the bedroom, it would be so easy and natural— _ and how he was so  _ sorry  _ and how he owed Drew a better  _ something.  _

Before he could fall completely apart, Drew had whispered a “hey, hey, it’s okay” and pressed his hands down onto Kyle’s shoulders, preventing him from tumbling into the frictionless void of space. It wasn’t a big deal at all, Drew had said, no one was going to be upset or disappointed about a casual get-together being canceled. No one expected him to hide himself away. He didn’t have to do this alone, even if  _ this _ was just an inconvenient bug and a head full of broken glass and carpet cleaner-soaked rags.

The rest of the day had been better by any metric. Bean had stationed himself in Kyle’s lap, not minding at all when Kyle needed to rub his velvety ear over and over and over again or when he shivered violently enough with cold to make the cushions springs clitter. Drew had said something about blankets being a metaphor for love as he brought him every blanket he could find—their cotton duvet, the heavy quilt, the Pokemon throw from Walmart—which Kyle thought about now with a cautious smile, feeling safe and warm in the center of his fabric embrace. They had watched the Puppy Bowl, asking Bean if he knew any of the players, and made ginger tea and waited for the Mucinex to kick in so that Kyle could manage some toast, at which point Drew decided he would eat the dip he had prepared for the party straight from the pan (“as long as we’re redefining what dinner has to be,” he had joked, eating buffalo dip with a wooden stirring spoon and washing it down with a Kool-Aid Jammer. Kyle didn’t know if it was the fever or the overwhelming gratitude, but he’d caught himself swallowing past a lump in his throat because he’d been so completely and crushingly in  _ love  _ with Drew in that moment.)

Bean padded across the living room, the drizzly click of his paws against the floor pulling Kyle from his reverie. He watched Bean curl up in his favorite spot under the coffee table and felt inexplicably at peace despite how disgustingly sweaty and bacteria-ridden his hair probably was and how some inflexible part of him would always be like glass instead of steel about today. There was no screaming, no thumping—just Drew’s rhythmic snoring and the placid murmur of the Wilder family onscreen. This room had doors, but there was no need to escape. 

  
He went back to sleep knowing this, dreaming hazily about the airplane from  _ Casablanca  _ and someone’s arms closing protectively around him as he held a Care Bear and wished for better days.


	4. where i can scream how i love you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dream factory!au. kyle and jessica are working as face characters at disney world for the summer and contending with a host of complex feelings about their co-workers drew and brianna.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not many warnings in this one, it's mostly just a silly teen romance.
> 
> dream factory!au: jessica convinces kyle to apply for the disney college program with her the summer before their freshmen year of college and he agrees to get away from his dad and make some money. when they get there with their cohort, the disney world face characters go on strike, forcing disney to recruit from their college program kids for quick replacements. he and jessica are cast and they meet and befriend drew and brianna, who are also in their cohort

“This is how it should go.”

In spite of his prodigious creativity and knack for anxiously imagining outrageous scenarios in which everything that could go wrong very much did, Kyle had never once imagined that he would one day be sitting in the Cast Members break room tucked behind Disney World’s Cinderella Castle with a strawberry-red wig pinned over his curls and his best friend explaining just how he should ask out the world’s handsomest and most perfect man.

“Drew’s a really nice guy. He’ll probably feel bad watching you try to make words and just ask you out instead,” Jessica said as she pronged the tomatoes that he’d left in his salad bowl onto her own plate. Disney College Program members had previously been barred from eating in the canteen once reserved exclusively for full-time employees, but the recent protests had forced administration to upgrade their status. Although he rarely worked up much of an appetite standing in the Orlando heat, he was so overwhelmed by the access to food— _ real  _ food, produce so green it bled raw sugar—that he felt compelled to take something during his break. He had never eaten so many salads in his life.

Kyle huffed, but there was no real virulence behind it. “I make plenty of words around Drew.”

“Oh, yeah. They just all happen to be ‘hi’ and ‘Drew’.”

“What about Brianna?” he retorted as his sun-chapped cheeks flared with color. “You’re not reciting sonnets around her.”

Jessica bit down on the cherry tomato in her mouth with more force than was necessary, blasting a jet of juice across their table. As much as she teased Kyle about agonizing constantly over Drew Sanchez and all the words that he wished he could share with him, she was faring no better with her crush on Brianna. She deeply envied him for getting to spend his mornings alongside the beautiful blonde, who made for a striking Tinkerbell. “That…” she began as she grabbed a napkin, “was not cool.”

“I know, I’m sorry, I just… Drew is Drew. He’s the most  _ beautiful  _ person I’ve ever seen—besides you, I mean—but he wears it like it’s nothing and he’s so smart, he knows so much about movies and books and—we talked about seahorses and he didn’t even say ‘why are we talking about seahorses’, he just talked about seahorses.” Overwhelmed, he dropped his head into his arms; everything smelled like hairspray and tomatoes. “I don’t know why I’m even thinking about this. We live in a dorm. He’s seen me brush my teeth. He’s—I wear  _ tights  _ to work. There’s no way in a million—”

“He likes you, you clown,” Jessica interrupted before he could drop down his metaphorical elevator shaft and descend messily into panic. “Everyone’s seen you brush your teeth. Every dude wears tights here. Plus he told Cassie that he thinks you’re really cute.”

Kyle lifted his head so abruptly that his wig’s synthetic bangs flopped right over his crown. “What?”

“Oh, did I forget to tell you?”

Their lunch break ended on this note. Kyle went back to work with the words “wanted” and “seahorse” pinging urgently around in his head and although he was a bit more absent-minded than usual, his smile never once lost its luster.

.

.

“Do you like your job?”

“Um…” Kyle fidgeted with his pen’s clicker, wondering if honesty was yet acceptable. His rehearsed response for his mom when she asked this question over the phone climbed instinctively aboard his tongue— _ it’s so great i’m so lucky i’m really liking it— _ but he swallowed it down. Drew was not his worried mother or his boss: he was his friend, a fact that Drew had verbalized a few days ago after they poured their clothes into a single washing machine to save on change. The word had slipped so easily from his mouth, as if it weighed nothing at all. “I mean… I don’t like dressing up. It makes me feel weird, like I’m a… an idea, not a person. And I don’t like how hot it gets or the rude parents who yell at their kids for not wanting a picture. But I like when the kids smile or ask me what Neverland’s like. And I like getting to work with Brianna and Jessica and-and you, and that I have this nice bed and food and a paycheck.”

Drew smiled from his place on Aaron’s bed, nothing in his friendly countenance or casual posture suggesting that this had been the wrong answer. “Man, if everyone was as grateful as you, Thanksgiving would be everyday.”

“I just don’t think… It could be a lot worse,” Kyle concluded lamely. He wasn’t ready to share anything more, but it was a minor relief that the option existed in some capacity. “I mean, do you like it?”

“It’s better than making chicken sandwiches. That’s what my summer was gonna look like before I got accepted. I don’t like the parents or the heat either, but… I don’t know, there’s something nice about getting to be what someone else thought of. It’s cool to be a big, manly guy and be bigger than yourself for a minute.”

His heart fluttered violently at the recalled image of Drew in his Gaston costume, posed under the sign for his namesake’s tavern with his muscled arms raised boastfully. Through his adoring eyes, Drew was a man, strapped with lean muscle and imbued with a golden vigor that seemed emblematic of a boyhood he’d never truly known. However, he understood that this belonging was new to him, that he quietly worried that one day he’d be identified as a fraud by some rude guest and ushered away by the closest Cast Member. Drew had spoken freely about his recent top surgery and how he couldn’t believe Disney hadn’t put out a headline about  _ him  _ being their first ever gay character, but there was a glibness to his tone when he shared these things that sounded practiced. It was almost as if he felt pressured to broadcast his identity before it could be discovered. “I think your self is the best version of you. Better than what anyone else could think of.”

There was a sudden hesitation to Drew’s posture, a hiatus in his movement. He stared back at Kyle for a long moment, his gaze suggesting acknowledgement but his frozen expression betraying no signs of comprehension. Just as Kyle was preparing to plunge down the elevator shaft and start apologizing for whatever he’d said, a cherishing glow enveloped his freckled face and he leaned forward from his perch. “You know, Jess told me you’ve never really been to the parks before.”

Kyle ground his thumb against the pen’s clicker until he felt his nail go cold with blood loss. “Um… I-I haven’t, no.”

“Do you wanna go tomorrow? It’s your day off, right?”

“I…” There was no trick, there was no endgame, there was no punishment waiting over the threshold. He swallowed again, then grinned until his cheeks felt like putty. “Yeah. Yeah, that—I’d love that.”

“Awesome. There’s so much I want to show you.”

(He would think about this later on, after he’d seen Drew out and climbed into bed and grabbed his Bedtime Bear from its place under his pillow to squeeze. Did Drew think of him? Did Drew wonder what he had and hadn’t seen?

Did Drew really  _ want  _ him?)

.

.

“Come on, man, it’s just an ice cream bar.”

“But it’s  _ eight  _ dollars. Ice cream bars are only worth like fifty cents,” Kyle insisted despite knowing that he wasn’t paying for the ice cream bar itself, he was paying for the experience of eating an ice cream bar in the Magic Kingdom. That logic didn’t preclude him from protesting Drew’s efforts to actually fork over eight whole dollars for a Mickey-shaped version of the same treat he would get from the ice cream truck when Danielle caught it for them. 

“It’s an iconic Disney treat. It’s like—churros, Dole Whip, and the Mickey bar,” Drew listed as he handed over his ID to receive the employee discount. Kyle watched their fellow Cast Member slide the plastic card through a reader, mentally jotting down the total so that he could repay Drew once they’d returned to the dormitories. “Besides, it’s a fucking sauna out. You need something cold while you sit and chill.”

“But you already got the ears,” Kyle continued. He didn’t want to prolong the conversation lest it curdle into an argument, but he couldn’t bear the thought of Drew assuming he wasn’t thankful. Drew had inaugurated him as a bonafide Disney World visitor by buying him a set of Mickey ears crafted from galaxy-printed silk and mounted on a headband before they’d even set foot on Main Street, which complemented Drew’s own Spaceship Earth ears nicely. Kyle had been so unbelievably touched that Drew remembered his affinity for space—a reaction that would later embarrass him once he realized that he had been wearing his NASA shirt that day—that he hadn’t kicked up much of a fuss. Now, the guilt was creeping like hives up his skin; he shivered, wanting to itch.

“Hey.” Drew grabbed their wrapped bars, then turned to take Kyle’s gaze gently into his own as one would a hand in dance. “It’s not a problem, Kyle. Seriously. You’ve done a lot for me over the past few weeks and, like—I want to do this. I’m happy to do it. Disney’s like this really special place to me and… I don’t know, it means a lot I’m the one showing it to you. I just want you to enjoy it without having to carry anything else with you, you know?”

_ I want to do this. _

Maybe it was the heat or the lingering adrenaline of his brush with panic, but he suddenly felt his legs tremble menacingly, threatening to fold in like lawn chairs. Sensing his distress, Drew softened; he touched the boy’s cheek imploringly. “Hey, hey—are you okay? Do you need to sit down or something?”

“N-No, I’m fine,” Kyle replied, even though he was in fact looking forward to sitting down once the opportunity presented itself. A cautious smile broke the fever of his shame. “I just… Thank you. For everything.”

“It’s not a problem,” Drew said with a beam of his own. His hand remained for a moment longer; Kyle wished it would stay forever. “Are you ready for the most average ice cream bar you’ve ever had?”

“Absolutely.” 

.

.

“He doesn’t think I’m weird.”

“Nobody thinks you’re weird, honey,” Brianna assured him. She expertly fixed her false eyelashes to her upper lid, blinked twice to bind the glue, and looked back at her friend. Although he’d dutifully changed into his costume, he hadn’t moved from the dressing room’s musty couch; he was knotted against the armrest, pulled into the smallest, most inoffensive shape possible. 

“But I am weird.” There was a note of resignation, of acceptance buried in his voice like a sudden slate of bedrock under what was thought to be silky soil. “And he’ll see that and then he’ll… He doesn’t need to make me feel normal.”

“Of course he doesn’t. He  _ wants  _ to.” She crossed the cramp space to hug him against her chest, her wings folding in on them like a second pair of loving arms. 

A relieved sigh escaped him. “Thanks, Brianna… No wonder Jessica likes you so much.”

“Wait—huh?”

It was difficult to find a photo from that afternoon where Peter Pan and Tinkerbell weren’t both madly flushed with infatuation.

.

.

“I think something’s happening to me.”

Jessica glanced up from her phone to find Kyle fondly dandling with the pair of Mickey ears that he’d painstakingly mounted over his room’s tiny desk. He’d been a touch distant ever since she had started dating Brianna—how Brianna had learned of Jessica’s crush, she would never know—but there was nothing vindictive or covetous to his behavior. It was simply a matter of floating for him, a process of reaching the point where he could finally express his feelings in suitable terms. That moment had come; she could sense him touching back down to Earth, enlightened by his journey. “What?”

A rare joy flared like sunrise in his night-dark eyes. “I think I’m in love.”

.

.

“I just know that it was originally supposed to take place in Kansas. On a farm. I like that idea, but I think I like the Hawaii setting better. It makes the movie feel more like a pearl.”

They were seated on the sidewalk’s ledge, waiting for the electric parade to ferry down the street and bring this blissful day to an end. Drew had built multiple breaks into their outing so that they would both have the stamina to watch the night parade, a decision that was proving indispensable given how much more animated Kyle was now compared to his sunburned lethargy at the end of last Friday’s trip. The boy was regaling him with trivia about his favorite Disney movie,  _ Lilo & Stitch,  _ and dreamily turning a geode over and over in his hands. He had finally managed to snag a Fast Pass for Space Mountain, which had of course ended up being Kyle’s favorite ride; they’d commemorated the experience by purchasing identical geodes in the gift shop. It was endlessly endearing to Drew the small things that brought Kyle so much happiness—geodes, gel pens, the ducks that wandered through the park’s landscaping. He wished there was some way to bottle the unbridled glee of these tiny moments so that there would always be joy on hand for Kyle to experience.

“I think Stitch shows up in the parade,” Drew said, leaning forward to scratch his ankle. “It’s really cool—everything looks so bright when it’s dark out like this, it looks like you’re seeing a cartoon in real life.”

“I’m so excited to see it,” Kyle replied earnestly. Drew lifted his head up to respond, only to be caught off guard by the mere sight of the boy’s face, lit periodically by the spinning chromatic LEDs of princess wands. His Mickey ears were tilted to the left from his constant tucking of his rumpled curls behind his right ear and there was a familiar streak of sunburn blitzing across the bridge of his nose from where he never remembered to apply enough lotion and his chin was still lightly bruised from spooking himself on The Haunted Mansion ride and banging it on his chest strap. He knew so much about the boy at his side already, yet he craved more. Every detail was so precious, its own geode waiting to be cracked. “Is… Is something wrong?”

“No, no, not at all.” Drew smiled, feeling hopelessly in love. “I just wanted to look at you.”

  
  



	5. even in my best condition, counting all the superstition.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> furnishing their new apartment brings out some frustrations in kyle that drew is surprised by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very very vague references to abuse, this one is mostly just very subtle angst....they're just two dudes talking.

even in my best condition, counting all the superstition.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t a big help.”

They were sitting on the kitchen linoleum, surrounded by construction detritus and the ultimately useless pages of instructions issued by Ikea. Although the chairs were now complete and parked handsomely at the small dinette table, neither had thought to inaugurate them; the building process had been too arduous to even justify that small celebration. Drew tipped the last dregs of Gatorade into his mouth, then set the bottle aside and looped a muscled arm around his boyfriend. “Of course you were a help. I’d still have the legs on backwards if you hadn’t found that video.”

“IkeaMaster88 helped you,” Kyle insisted, his rankled tone sublimating all the misplaced screws and splinters of the night into those frustrated few words. Drew hadn’t lost his temper once during the whole affair, hadn’t even compromised his grip on it, but Kyle was observant enough to detect those rare glimmers of irritation when they did crack his cool exterior. “It’s… You shouldn’t have had to do all that by yourself. We didn’t move in together so you could hurt your thumb building chairs all by yourself while I sat here like a cinderblock.”

“My thumb is fine,” Drew assured him with a gentle chuckle. 

“It’s just chairs.” The self-flagellation in his voice was audible enough that Drew could hear the metaphorical whip making contact with his skin.

“We also didn’t move in together so we could magically do everything equal, you know? I don’t mind building a few chairs, babe. And it’s not just chairs,” he added softly. He knew where Kyle’s mind was going and how precipitous that drop could be, especially without a balustrade in place. It wasn’t just the chairs: it was the unfamiliarity with the tools and the agitation when the instruction illustrations were incomprehensible to him and the self-perpetuated notion of uselessness. To Kyle, this night was emblematic of his failings as a boyfriend and an equal.

Kyle leaned his head back against the cabinet. “This shouldn’t be the hard part.”

“Hey. We’re making it happen. Everything goes through drafts.”

“Homes shouldn’t have to.”

“Here.” Drew stood suddenly, offering his hand to Kyle and waiting patiently until it was accepted so he could lead him over to the table. He sat down demonstratively in one chair—the laminated wood now cradling him where it had before resisted his every touch—then gestured for Kyle to take the other. Once they were seated, he glanced around their tiny galley kitchen with the still stickered dishwasher and the half-refrigerator and the microwave oven that Cassie had given them as a self-proclaimed “house-warming” gift; a smile crossed his scruffy face. “Don’t you see it?”

A cautious optimism welled up in his eyes. “Yeah. Things do kind of look better from here.”

“It’s just a work in progress, you know? But it’s still home because it’s us. Both of us. The spacebar wasn’t built in a day, right?”

Kyle laughed in spite of himself, initially moving to stifle it with his hand before relaxing and letting the sound exist unchecked. A beat later, he was touching Drew’s arm. “I love you. I’m… I’m just sorry for—”

“No more of that,” Drew kindly interrupted as he leaned in to kiss his temple. “I love you, too. And I’m glad I’m home with you.”

  
“Me too.” He scooted the chair— _ his  _ chair—closer and allowed himself to momentarily relish in the affection. “Me too.”


	6. daisies to push through the floor.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bapc!au. Jessica doesn't understand how kyle's powers work and neither does he.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very very vague references to abuse, mentions of blood and minor injury (like a cut), some quiet angst, then lots of comfort.
> 
> bapc!au: jessica moves to a quiet beachside town and meets kyle, a sweet boy with Moon Powers that he's figuring out after having kept them repressed from his stepfather's abuse (healing, forcefields, ocean tides, emotions, etc.)

daisies to push through the floor.

“Are you bleeding, man?”

When the sun melted like tallow into the foamy soap of the sea and burned the sky to a bruise-blue crisp, he was always afraid that the moon would never appear behind it. His fears were mostly unfounded, especially tonight when they were due for a waxing crescent, but he nevertheless watched the horizon with his pulse drumming anticipatorily in every corner of his body. The monthly new moon was difficult enough given the havoc it wreaked on his nascent powers: the idea of no moon, of a pupil-like void among the sprinkle of stars, discharged citric sluices of terror from his skin.

“Dude.” Jessica again, a strawberry rash of annoyance marbling her voice. Kyle looked to his left and was momentarily arrested by the striking beauty of his best friend’s face. The sun loved her, kissed her daily; a constellation of freckles eclipsed either bronze cheek and penny-colored streaks brightened her lush crop of red curls. He wanted to tell her that she was  _ so _ pretty because it was the truth and there was no time or place where he could tell her enough how much he loved her, but she grabbed his arm before he could string those words together. “You literally are. When’d you get cut?”

He followed her gaze down to the butter-pat pad of fat at the crux of his elbow where the two thin appendages met and found it awash in blood. The gash was clean, almost surgical—probably an errant sea shell. “I don’t remember my elbow getting stabbed.”

“It was from climbing on those tide pool rocks. You seriously healed my weenie cut, but didn’t touch your arm? Your arm that’s gushing blood?”

“It’s not gushing blood,” Kyle retorted, wishing they weren’t standing by the shore. The gravity of his frustration was tugging on the tides against his will; water lapped at their sandal-clad feet. “It’s fine. My mom has lots of Band-Aids.”

“You’re always covered in Band-Aids,” Jessica said with a pointed glance at his bandaged legs. “Why can’t you heal yourself like you heal me?”

A jag of irritation stabbed its way through his unease. “I just can’t.”

She gently touched the skin surrounding the wound, the slight pressure belatedly alerting him to its dull sting. Her aura shimmered with a Valentine-pink phosphorescence, something like pity lodged in the hollow heart of love. “You’re so good at healing me and making those forcefields around me… Why can’t you do that to yourself?”

Kyle reached up instinctively for his hoodie drawstring, only to remember that he’d left the jacket on his desk chair; instead, he wrapped his hand around his throat. The sensation was unpleasantly familiar, but he needed the stimulation. He wanted to tell Jessica that he didn’t know  _ how  _ to focus his powers internally, that there were no mirrors present to reflect that nourishing glow inward. It felt tremendously uncomfortable to even attempt drinking up that energy, like stealing bread from the mouths of the hungry. The moon didn’t shine alone: it was merely lit by a generous slant of sunlight. Nobody cared if the moon cratered and blinked from the sky. He was worthless on his own, left to weather the asteroids and meteors as they came.

“I’m not…” His stepfather’s words flooded his mouth like a gulp of medicine; he swallowed, poisoning himself. “I just can’t do it, Jessica. I’m sorry.”

She stared down at the gash for a long moment, her eyes brimming with a Christmas-star refulgence. Finally, she took his hand instead and offered him an endeared smile. “Come on then. Let me do the healing. I think there’s still some Star Wars Band-Aids in the cabinet.”

Jessica was the center of a golden corona of light, a celestial halo that soothed even more than the glow of a full moon. The sun had fallen to the bottom of the ocean behind them, but the day persisted in Jessica, baked everlastingly into the sandy-gold of her skin. He felt as though he could survive a night with no moon, so long as he was held fast in orbit around her and that star burning deep within her. “I’ll try. I swear.”

“I know you will, dude.” With a chivalrous bow, she leaned down to press a kiss to his knuckles—warmth in the windowless void of space. “Now let’s get inside.”

  
  



End file.
